The choice in 2024: building America or tearing it apart

Inclusion only threatens bigots

Permit me to begin with some positive messages. The Washington Post reports, "Trump's presidential bid has the support of only half of his Cabinet." A T-shirt reads, "Voting prevents unwanted presidencies." Simone Biles tweets, "I love my black job" after her thrilling Olympic gymnastic comeback.

James Baldwin, whose 100th birthday was August 2, wrote that "ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have." And here we are with an ignoramus seeking to replace the American presidency with a dictatorship, aided by many who should know better but are intoxicated with the prospect of power.

The Trump phenomenon is a blend of know-nothingism, bigoted appeals, and theft. If every news cycle becomes a question of how Democrats will respond to his latest mud-slinging—such as by obligingly refuting his claims about Kamala Harris's birth certificate—we are playing on his ground.

If we let a lying sociopath be the arbiter of authenticity, we are surely lost.

Trump says millions are crossing our southern border in an invasion, when border crossings have actually gone down. But how can there be any illegal border crossings if he built his much-touted wall as he has claimed? And if an invasion is underway (instead of a migration, which is a different thing), why did he kill the border security bill?

It may be a blessing that Trump cannot help blurting out stupid and vicious things that play to his diehard supporters but turn off everyone else.

Democrats have newfound energy and enthusiasm, thanks to a young and gifted candidate who was ready for her moment. Her opponent, meanwhile, appears convinced that people with multiracial backgrounds are a rarity, despite his running mate J.D. Vance having biracial children. Some Trump supporters have reprised his Obama-era birtherism by suggesting Harris is ineligible to run for president because her mother came from India and her father from Jamaica. She, however, was born in Oakland, California, and is every bit as American as Trump.

Director Ryan Coogler is also from Oakland. The final scene in his movie Black Panther is set there, though it was actually shot across the street from Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, whose pastor is Sen. Raphael Warnock.

Life is a series of connections. That scene in Black Panther features King T'Challa, played by the late Chadwick Boseman, who was proud of his fellow Howard University alum Kamala. She is a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, founded at Howard in 1908.

Trump, however, thought it was smart to question Harris's blackness in an interview at the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. His intended audience was doubtless his supporters who love seeing him "stick it to" people they hate.

Vance later called Harris a chameleon, despite having changed his own name three times and reversed his harsh criticism of Trump.

Harris showed leadership last February by holding private meetings with the German Chancellor and the Slovenian Prime Minister at the Munich Security Conference to win their help with the complex prisoner exchange carried out on August 1. By contrast, Trump offers empty boasting. He has no use for diplomacy. He filters everything through his self interest rather than the national interest. His idea of leadership is a plan to fire all federal employees who do not swear loyalty to him instead of the Constitution.

Instead of ignoring Trump or letting him control the debate, Democrats need to make the case for the values and traditions they are defending and upholding. One is the First Amendment "right of the people peaceably to assemble," which Trump would violate by using federal troops to suppress protesters.

We are a diverse people, despite Trump's assumption of whiteness as a standard. Contrary to his portrayal of diversity as a threat, it is a source of enrichment. There are countless examples of contributions made by black people, from doorknobs to inoculations to music. Trump can perhaps be credited with innovations in grifting.

We do not have to accept that for one group to advance, another must suffer. Indeed, the discussion of multiracial families illustrates that there are no firm borders between groups.

Too many people fail to distinguish the ginned-up dramas called "reality TV" from the radical program to reshape our country represented by the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. If we share Lincoln's determination "that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth," we must defeat the real threat to our republic, which is coming from within.

Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist at [email protected].

Copyright © 2024 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.